"Alex Chaihorsky" writes:

I think chess became less popular after the birth of PC (its a better toy,
IMHO)
Also the fact that today machine beats human champ played its role lately.

The machine is programmed with algorithms of human invention, is given
all that is known of human strategy, primed with studies of decades of
human competition, and this machine takes the credit?

Pah.

Cheers,

- Joel

"Alex Chaihorsky" writes:

I think chess became less popular after the birth of PC (its a better toy,
IMHO)
Also the fact that today machine beats human champ played its role lately.

The machine is programmed with algorithms of human invention, is given
all that is known of human strategy, primed with studies of decades of
human competition, and this machine takes the credit?

Pah.

Cheers,

- Joel

Those castles were largely destroyed by the shoguns seeking to prevent
any successful rebellion. Or did you really think that the clans were
stupid enough to destroy something as awesomely valuable as a castle?
~Maru
cc wrote:
.....

This is laughable. The medieval
Japan was a theatre of many battles between clans for centuries. If after
every battle the army of one side will lose all its trained officers to
suicide practice, the country would cease to exist.


This is exactly what happened. Open an history book some day. When a clan
lost a war, the surviving warriors were executed unless they managed to
kill themselves before being caught. The only choice of life for a member of
a defeated samurai family was lonely wandering in the mountains or, if his
enemies allowed it, joining the "buraku" (sort of ghetto for the caste of
people considered lower than
the anybody else). The castle of the clan was destroyed and all their lands
and belonging taken. Their country disappeared from the map. Only 3 castles
(among the hundreds that were ever built) were left at the end of samurai
wars.
Wishing that those times come back in Japan (as you did) is like wishing a
new Staline to Russia (which I don't).

Kuri

It's also laughable because many of the lords changed sides on a near
clockwork basis. Like chivalry, bushido was more a nostalgic belief than a
real one, and was codified when the warrior period was waning- in fact it
was pretty much dead (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/TOKJAPAN/NEO.HTM).

It would have been a waste to kill every samurai who was on the losing side,
and it would also have been impossible, since some would get away. Some
became ronin, selling themselves to the highest bidder. Some committed
seppuku. Some even may have become yakuza. Other masterless samurai,
especially in the waning days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, became artisans and
traders. Some even became farmers.
Romantic and sad as it might be to picture medieval Japan just plumb full of
wandering samurai families whose lords had lost battles, it doesn't ring
true. Were there lots of samurai who were put to death at the end of a
battle? Heck, yes. At the end of the Warring States period, only about a
dozen major families remained extant. I wouldn't want to live in the period
of Warring States for anything. But every samurai who was originally on the
losing side wasn't killed, and samurais didn't exist as a fully separate
caste until the time of Toyatomi Hideyoshi, when everyone in Japanese
society started to be locked into their social roles.

"Maru" ""marudubshinki \"@ gmail.com" wrote in message
...
Those castles were largely destroyed by the shoguns seeking to prevent
any successful rebellion. Or did you really think that the clans were
stupid enough to destroy something as awesomely valuable as a castle?
~Maru
cc wrote:
....

This is laughable. The medieval
Japan was a theatre of many battles between clans for centuries. If
after
every battle the army of one side will lose all its trained officers to
suicide practice, the country would cease to exist.


This is exactly what happened. Open an history book some day. When a
clan
lost a war, the surviving warriors were executed unless they managed to
kill themselves before being caught. The only choice of life for a
member of
a defeated samurai family was lonely wandering in the mountains or, if
his
enemies allowed it, joining the "buraku" (sort of ghetto for the caste
of
people considered lower than
the anybody else). The castle of the clan was destroyed and all their
lands
and belonging taken. Their country disappeared from the map. Only 3
castles
(among the hundreds that were ever built) were left at the end of
samurai
wars.
Wishing that those times come back in Japan (as you did) is like wishing
a
new Staline to Russia (which I don't).

Kuri